Keeping your cat healthy is no doubt one of your top priorities: If or no other reason than to avoid costly vet bills.

With the economic downturn, everyone is looking for ways to save a few dollars and scrimping on day to day expenses is becoming a new way of life for many of us. A buck saved now means more to go around later.

An Ounce of Prevention

It is said that an "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Nowhere is that more evident than in providing preventative care for your cat. By empowering yourself with some basic knowledge, most disorders, illnesses, and diseases, that are common to cats, are very easily prevented. You might want to read that again. The choices you make have a direct impact on your cats' health, wellbeing and life expectancy!

Creating a Healthy Cat from the Inside Out

Studies have shown that as much as 80% of a cat's immune system health comes directly from the digestive system. Cheap food cannot contain much of what your cat needs to stay healthy. In fact, along with vaccines, it is a primary cause of your cat illnesses. "You are what you eat" has never been truer!

Chronic inflammation of the gastro-intestinal tract has a direct link to the development of immune system problems, and cancers like lymphoma. How so?

Imagine your favorite childhood breakfast cereal. You know, sugary sweet, with lots of empty calories. Or maybe, you're the health conscious type, and prefer a cereal with all the "good stuff"- bran, fiber, and a few dried fruits thrown in for good measure. Seems healthy, right?

Now imagine you ate that same cereal as your total diet, twice a day for 5 months, let alone 5 years. How healthy would you be then? In the documentary "Super Size Me", the human guinea pig showed such serious signs of declining health in less than 30 days, that his battery of doctors urged him to stop immediately or risk irreversible health damage.

And yet, commercial cat food is the equivalent of that same bowl of cereal twice a day for life. A steady diet of empty calories, meat byproducts (rendered meat, and meat unfit for human consumption) and filler has created legions of unhealthy cats.

Consider for a moment two statistics:

80% of your cats immune system is based in the gut

90% of chronic illness is caused by an unhealthy immune system

Commercial cat foods have been linked to a variety of health problems in cats, including chronic dehydration, urinary tract disease, skin disease, allergies, gum disease, renal failure, and chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, a precipitating factor in GI lymphoma, a type of cancer in cats.

If your priority is to keep your cat healthy and minimize vet bills, it's time to take a careful look at your cats' diet.

Feeding Your Cat as Nature Intended
Today, cats are chronically dehydrated. In as little as 5 years, dehydration leads to urinary tract disease and most importantly, renal (kidney) failure; the 2nd most common cause of death for older cats. In addition, cats fed primarily commercially prepared dry foods have been shown to have greater problems with obesity, as well as making them more prone to hepatic lipidosis, or fatty liver disease.

Cats are carnivores. The ancestors of today's domestic cat evolved on the deserts of Africa. Their sole source of both protein and water intake found only in their prey. In that natural setting, a cat's diet consisted of at least 65% water, with no supplemental water intake necessary.

Today, commercial cat food is so far removed from your cats' natural diet that it flies in the face of thousands-of-years of evolution; in no way should it be considered food, let alone the best food for your cat.

Dry cat food contains less than 10% water: simply adding water to it is not the answer. The water found in raw meats is organic, not the same as water from the tap, or even bottled water.

Although commercially prepared canned cat food typically contains 40-45% water, it is not the organically sourced water that your cat needs to maintain a healthy intestinal and immune system.

Begin today to transition your cat to a natural diet that most closely resembles what nature intended. Raw food and home-cooked diets are the ideal, as they provide your cat with the nutrition they require to be healthy, and through that, to live a happy life that exceeds today's typical life expectancy.

Prepared cat food should only be used as a backup. When you have to feed a commercial diet, take care to select a diet with a high-moisture content, that utilizes quality meats and ingredients, as opposed to by-products and filler, which have little or no nutritional value. You are not likely to find such food on either your grocery store or pet store isles.

You can increase your cats' health, and reduce his or her chances of developing many health problems simply by changing what your cat eats.

Vaccinations- Friend or Foe?

Much has been written and debated about the merits and drawbacks of vaccines in cats. Emerging research has shown that as a whole, cats are being over-vaccinated.

Over-vaccination, in the form of both too many different vaccine types, as well as the frequency that vaccines are administered, can lead to many adverse effects in cats, including immune system dysfunction and serious systemic reactions, like vaccine related sarcomas and other cancers.

So, you may ask, if there are so many downsides to vaccinating, should I stop vaccinating my cat altogether? The short answer: you might just consider it.

In the last 20 years, as more vaccines have become available, and increasing number of vaccines have been administered to cats, the occurrence of cancer and other immune system problems in cats have skyrocketed. Several universities have shown in studies a link between increased vaccination administration and increasing rates of disease in cats.

Cats with minimal exposure (such as indoor-only cats) may be able to go without vaccination altogether. It is up to you to be educated about your choices, and be your cats advocate , especially when it comes to vaccination.

All probiotics are not created equal! Soil-based probiotics do not require refrigeration; they are hardy, non-allergenic, and do not contain growth hormone, or antibiotic residues.

Pet Flora is a powerful soil-based probiotic. It performs many functions; it helps to maintain intestinal balance, assists in nutrient absorption and normalize stools, while reducing inflammation in the intestines. It is vital to improving immunity and increasing cat health.
Super Pet Enzymes is a specifically created formula designed to survive the highly acidic environment of your cat's stomach to maximize digestion of food and absorption of nutrients, as well as helping to ensure that medications are properly dispersed and digested throughout the body.

The Whole Picture

Chronic vomiting and diarrhea (occurring on a regular basis more than twice a week) are early warning signs. Left unattended chronic disorders lead to more serious disease.

Failure to address the underlying causes of GI upset, with better food choices and supplements, leads to more serious, and far more costly, illness in your cats' future.

If you feed your cat a proper diet, you will relegate costly veterinarian to unavoidable physical injury.

The addition of Pet Flora,Vital Pet Lipids, and Pet Enzymes to your pets diet everyday can help to ensure the health of your cats gastrointestinal system, encourage nutrient absorption and reduce inflammation in the intestinal tract, one of the causes of lymphoma in cats.